In Search of the Perfect Investment

There will be a rate hike. It will be small. It won’t affect anyone’s profitability, anyone’s EPS (earnings per share).

The talk is what spooks markets, not the reality.

When markets dip, buy the dips.

What gets me is why the government bothers to regulate the price of money. It long ago ceased to regulate airline fares, telephone bills, etc.

Why interest rates?

Low interest rates are meant to stimulate business growth — but they don’t. Opportunities do.

Low interest rates hurt millions of retired and semi-retired people. These are poor souls who once thought they could live on their savings. “I’m here from the government and I’m here to help you.”

Meanwhile banks don’t want to lend money.

I’m treasurer of my apartment building. We’re trying to borrow $5.6 million. I’m shopping the loan to bank after bank, to financial institution after financial institutions.

I am hearing a lot of “We don’t lend money on mortgages any longer.”

So what do you do? I ask them.

None of their people seem to know. I think they want to mismanage the money of rich people. I don’t make this stuff up.

Maybe Wells Fargo can teach them. See below.

New ways of making a living: The first one is from LA. The second one is a Venmo account number. Oodles of people sent him money. Venmo is a money-transfer company that is a subsidiary of PayPal.

A kid held up a sign with his Venmo ID on ESPN and thousands of people sent him money. Read more here.

Wells Fargo is a disgusting bank. How disgusting? The headline reads:

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Fines Wells Fargo $100 Million for Widespread Illegal Practice of Secretly Opening Unauthorized Accounts

Wells Fargo’s violations include:

• Opening deposit accounts and transferring funds without authorization: According to the bank’s own analysis, employees opened roughly 1.5 million deposit accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers. Employees then transferred funds from consumers’ authorized accounts to temporarily fund the new, unauthorized accounts. This widespread practice gave the employees credit for opening the new accounts, allowing them to earn additional compensation and to meet the bank’s sales goals. Consumers, in turn, were sometimes harmed because the bank charged them for insufficient funds or overdraft fees because the money was not in their original accounts.
• Applying for credit card accounts without authorization: According to the bank’s own analysis, Wells Fargo employees applied for roughly 565,000 credit card accounts that may not have been authorized by consumers. On those unauthorized credit cards, many consumers incurred annual fees, as well as associated finance or interest charges and other fees.
• Issuing and activating debit cards without authorization: Wells Fargo employees requested and issued debit cards without consumers’ knowledge or consent, going so far as to create PINs without telling consumers.
• Creating phony email addresses to enroll consumers in online-banking services: Wells Fargo employees created phony email addresses not belonging to consumers to enroll them in online-banking services without their knowledge or consent.

You can read the entire story on the CBPB’s web site. Click here.

But Wells Fargo’s business practices extend to other naughtinesses. For example, a friend emails me:

When my Mom died a few years ago, we had to deal with several financial institutions on the distribution of the money in her accounts to her heirs, per her will.  All the institutions we dealt with promptly did the distributions. Wells Fargo, by contrast, dragged its feet for eight months before it did what it was supposed to do, in spite of repeated follow-ups and requests for status updates. It was clear to all of us pretty quickly that something was rotten at Wells Fargo. It was so unlike — in the worst possible way — all the other financial institutions we dealt with after my Mom died. If it weren’t for our keeping the pressure on Wells Fargo, it probably still would be clutching onto my Mom’s money today.

 WFC has gone nowhere in the past year, except down. This smells like the classic cockroach stock. A good short?

Useful stuff:

+ Some banks and on-line brokers offer two-factor ID. Sign up if you can. It significantly tightens your security.

+ Don’t back anything up to the “cloud” before you back it up some place else, like a cheap thumb drive. Click here.

+ My new broker charges $25 to send a wire. This is a ripoff. JPMorgan Chase is free.

+ Watch out when building with “new” wood. My contractor tells me wood these days is “sappier,” which causes paint to turn yellow quickly. Too quickly.

+ My friend Frank Derfler says don’t put WD-40 into locks. He says  a small container of powdered graphite is ideal for locks. Spritz it into the hole. It LUBRICATES locks.

 Favorite signs:

These come from a Chevron gas station on North 45 Street in Seattle. Cassandra Spangler puts a new sign up once a week. It’s good for business.

My unfavorite candidate.

After the twin towers fell on 9/11, Donald Trump boasted his building on Wall Street was now the tallest in New York City. He has also called the newly built 1 World Trade Center “disgusting” and “a piece of junk.” Last year, he claimed, without offering evidence, that “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attacks.For more, click here.


Harry Newton visited his gastroenterologist. Upshot: I’m now back on one Prilosec a day and one Vitamin D3 1000 IU a day — to buy click here. I’m off coffee and alcohol (which I was never on).

The U.S. Open Final taught me to hit out aggressively. And this morning it worked. Yipee. Thank you Stan The Man (Wawrinka).